Linksys WRT1900AC review: Fast, easy to set up, and every feature you can imagine

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The original blue-and-black Linksys WRT54G wireless router, released way back in 2002, holds an odd place in my heart. On the one hand, it was cheap and performed reasonably well, but on the other it also crashed regularly and was a pain in the ass to set up. Fortunately, 11 years on, things have changed a bit. The WRT1900AC, the spiritual successor to the WRT54G, is one of the fastest routers on the market, easy to configure, stable, fun to use, and attractive. The only real downside that I could find is that the WRT1900AC is definitely not cheap and cheerful like the WRT54G. Priced at $280, the WRT1900AC is a serious piece of high-spec hardware — with perhaps just a small price premium thanks to its prestigious forebear.

Tech specs

As you would expect, for $280 — really, a disgusting amount of money for a wireless router — you do get some utterly insane tech specs. There are four antennas, connected to a 4×4 Marvel Avastar 88W8864 chipset that’s capable of pushing up to three 80MHz 802.11ac spatial streams over the 5GHz band, for a total 802.11ac throughput of 1300Mbps, or 1.3Gbps. (For more info on how 802.11ac works, read our explainer.) The router is fully backwards compatible with previous 802.11 standards, and is capable of four-stream 802.11n (600Mbps) over the 2.4GHz band. Now you know why it’s called the 1900AC — 1300Mbps + 600Mbps = 1900Mbps (though I don’t think the router is actually capable of maxing out both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks simultaneously).

There’s also a four-port gigabit ethernet switch on the back of the WRT1900AC, a single Gig-E WAN port (for your modem), a USB 3.0 port, and a combo USB 2.0/eSATA port. FAT, NTFS, and HFS+ file systems are supported on external storage. As part of the Marvel chip, there’s a dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz. There’s also 256MB of DDR3 RAM. The WRT1900AC is a beast. (It’s by far the heaviest consumer WiFi router I’ve ever held, incidentally, due to a rather massive heat sink that’s necessitated by the over-the-top hardware.)

Setup

Setting up the WRT1900AC is very easy. Unlike other routers that I’ve set up in the past, where you might have to do some manual IP address configuration, the WRT1900AC is managed by visiting a website, https://linksyssmartwifi.com. When you first plug the WRT1900AC into your modem (or some other network with internet connectivity), it seemingly phones home and tells Linksys your internet IP address. Then, when you visit linksyssmartwifi.com, I assume some magical combo of UPnP (or maybe just redirection) takes you to your router’s config panel. It’s pretty slick.

Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Setup complete

The setup process requires you to create an account, which is used to log into the router — but because you access the router through a normal website, you can administer it from your smartphone, the office, or indeed any internet-connected device. The setup process also checks for updated firmware, and runs you through the usual wireless network configuration. Because the router is backwards compatible with every other 802.11 technology (b, g, n), you have the option of setting up a 2.4GHz network, a 5GHz (802.11ac) network, or both. It’s all very easy to set up.

Performance

Ultimately, if you spend $280 on being an 802.11ac early adopter, you’re really only doing it for one reason: You’re giddy at the thought of a wireless network that’s capable of ethernet-like transfer speeds. Well, let me just begin this section by saying, yes, 802.11ac really is fast — but, as you would expect, despite a theoretical max speed of 1300Mbps, you won’t ever get close to that. In reality, you probably won’t even break the gigabit-per-second barrier — but still, compared to the usual 100-150Mbps that you’d usually get with 802.11n, we’re still talking about a massive performance boost.

Linksys WRT1900AC performance

In real-world testing, average throughput for large files (installation files, TV shows, movies) was around 400 megabits per second (or 50 megabytes per second). That’s with the router upstairs and my laptop (a late-2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display) downstairs. I occasionally saw bursts of 500 or 600Mbps. Sitting upstairs, within a few feet of the router, 450-500Mbps was just about sustainable.

Linksys tells me that the WRT1900AC with a late-2013 MacBook Pro should be capable of three 802.11ac 80MHz 433Mbps streams, for a total of 1299Mbps — but that drops down to “between 700 and 800Mbps when TCP network overhead is accounted for.”

I’m not sure why I was limited to around 50MB/sec (400Mbps). I tried copying files from both my NAS (connected to the WRT1900AC via wired Gig-E), and from a USB 3.0 flash drive plugged straight into the router — both of which I have previously tested at speeds of over 70MB/sec (~600Mbps). There are no other 5GHz networks in my area, so it probably isn’t interference. Other reviewers have managed transfer speeds of 80MB/sec using the WRT1900AC, so it is theoretically possible to hit 700Mbps or more. Linksys says it could be because I’m in Europe, where the number of channels and output power is restricted.

The wired side of the WRT1900AC works exactly as advertised: I saw full gigabit ethernet speeds when copying data from my NAS, and from the directly attached USB 3.0 flash drive.

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CynthiaAAdams

There are no other 5GHz networks in my area, so it probably isn’t interference. Other reviewers have managed transfer speeds of 80MB/sec using the WRT1900AC, so it is theoretically possible to hit 700Mbps or more. Linksys says it could be because I’m in Europe, where the number of channels and output power is restricted. http://num.to/9169-4670-8791

bob

Can you install zrouter on it?

chojin999

Real world performance is way lower than what claimed by manufacturers. Most 802.11n access points and routers claimed to be capable to deliver 150Mbps or 300Mbps actually connect at just 65Mbps .. most WiFi antennas just don’t connect at higher speeds. And if you have some walls that could drop too. And the real actual transfer speed it’s just 2400KByte/s to 3000KByte/s… which means half the negotiated link speed…
Changing settings can manage someone to go up to 100Mbps connection but it rarely means anything more than 5000KByte/s real transfer rate like when copying files on the LAN….
That happens with routers and adapters of various manufacturers, not just a single brand is affected. And despite the diagnostics showing 90% to 100% signal strength and quality..
The main issue lies with the fact that due to regulatory laws all WiFi systems are limited to a very low power output in the 100mWatt to 200mWatt range… So unless using some active amplifiers (illegal to use in many countries) to raise the power above 500milliWatts things won’t improve much despite using a better protocol like the 802.11ac is…
So a 802.11ac connection might end up in the real world with a 20,000KByte/s transfer rate if someone is luck enough… but probably even lower than that.. and not even 50,000KByte/s..

Stacey Bright

If a router is claiming to provide 150-300Mbps link speed it usually can, but the client device is the limiting factor. That 65Mbps is pretty specific to lower-end adapters and phones that don’t use atleast 3 antennas (possibly using only 1). Most consumers don’t know that the max speed listed is the combined value of the upstream and downstream though, and that to even get 300Mbps the router and client have to be configured for 40mhz operation (commonly off by default).

irwincur

What made the original wrt54g was not the hardware or software it shipped with, it was the fact that it could run tons of modified router OS’s. One of the first and by far the most flexible, until they diluted the specs with five or six hardware revisions.

Christoffer Viken

Actually, the WRT56 was popular for over a year before that happened. Someone had to convince Linksys (pre Cisco) that linux means you should publish it.
It was pretty decent for it’s time.

aaronj2906

“every feature you can imagine”
Curious… I’m still waiting for one that will do IPSEC shared secret-based site-to-site VPN, using a FQDNs (instead of static IP). An tiny old re-purposed PC box running pfSense and an AP sitting on top currently solves this for much less.

Christoffer Viken

It probably should have read “every feature I [, the reviewer] can imagine ever actually using”

Purple-Stater

Can’t say that I’m happy about the need to log in to someone else’s website in order to do any sort of configuration. I rather prefer my hardware/software to NOT be phoning home constantly, because Lord only knows what information is going where.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

I’m pretty sure you can log into the router locally if you want, via the router’s local IP address. (http://myrouter.local works as well, I think.)

DK_03

I bought this router last night and set it up in my home environment. It can be configured without logging into an external web site. If you want to be able to admin the router when away from home then you need the external ID/password setup.

Robert W. Burnham

I love some of the photos in this review, especially “router man sitting on a fence.”

This is clearly an excellent product, but to really make it worth the cost I think Linksys will need to release a switch and a cable modem with the same design so we can stack them like Lego blocks.

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